Darling Detained Dexter
by Somigliana
Summary: Crossover with Dexter. I froze in mid-stride; the Dark Passenger hissed and snarled and unsheathed its claws. Good Muggle… now, walk down the next alley to your left…


A/N: Follows Book three: _Dexter in the Dark_.  
Thank you to Annie Talbot and Gelsey for conspiring with the Dark Passenger to kill off the typos.  
For Laiksmarei.

* * *

LONDON'S MOON WAS SUBDUED AND WAXY; IT LACKED THE BLOOD-RED, manic edge of Miami's murderous moon. That's not to say that the bright, round moon—reflected in a hypnotic and shimmering double on the Thames—didn't set Need spiralling through my blood like dark ink. I pressed my palm against the cold glass of the hotel room window, and the double moon called to me, whispered of the deliciously dark things it saw in the shadows of the city. My Dark Passenger stirred restlessly, fluttered irritably with boredom.

I sighed as I turned from the tempting call of the moon, closed my fist to curb the tingling desire in my fingertips. My Dark Passenger hissed, then coiled back into a tight knot, sulking.

Dexter, the Dark Avenger, is on honeymoon, and I have been Dull Dutiful Dexter for the last two weeks—dragged through Europe from museum to cathedral to romantic spot like a well-trained dog on a leash. It wasn't until I saw my faux-dutiful expression plastered on several other weary, masculine faces at the Louvre that I realised that my façade of husbandly virtue was not that unique, after all.

Dearly Devoted Dexter gritted his teeth and smiled adoringly at his new wife all the while, even when she got a new and frighteningly frenzied look in her eyes upon realising that there wouldn't be enough hours to see every tourist trap there was to see in the vast and sophisticated breadth of the European sub-continent.

"And we _have_ to stop off in London on our way home. They've got the Eye and Madam Tussaud's and the Queen and…"

My stomach grumbled—roiling with more than Dark Need—and I scowled at the room service menu. English food was too bland and French food had been too refined for my greedy metabolism; I would kill for a decent _medianoche_ sandwich. My Dark Passenger chuckled with eager encouragement.

_Outside_, it whispered.

Desperately Desiring Dexter stared at the gibbous moon, feeling its call resonate in his blood again, and he picked up his wallet.

"Dex?" Rita murmured sleepily, stretching out her arm in invitation. Her skin glowed in the moonlight like love was pulsing bright, right beneath the surface of her skin.

"Just going out to find something to eat," I said. "I'll be back before you know it, and maybe I'll still be hungry when I get back..." I smiled wolfishly as I winked at her. It's much easier now… to find the right words to say… the careful combination to convince Rita that I am filled with emotion, with love.

"Miss you," she said, arching her body into the bright stripe of the moonlight that fell across the bed.

Don't get me wrong; she's a lovely woman. If I _could_ feel, I think I might love Rita…

~DDD~

I shouldn't have been surprised to find a Cuban Restaurant nearby—London did have a bright, cosmopolitan flavour tingeing the greyness and deepening the night shadows. No pork sandwiches in sight, but the Cuban Hamburger was satisfying, and I felt uncommonly satisfied as I strolled down Charing Cross Road and revelled under the radiant moon, delighted in the thrilling sense of danger that vibrated through the night, rode on the menacing pools of darkness that spilled around corners. Even the Dark Passenger whispered its enjoyment, gave up on the relenting yearning for Miami and Dark Avenging. I smiled; London came to life under the moon, turning from shades of grey to moonlight and darkness.

And then a third voice intruded on our enjoyment. _Stop walking and listen_. The voice was more hypnotic and commanding than the moon, more insistent than my own Dark Passenger. I froze in mid-stride; the Dark Passenger hissed and snarled and unsheathed its claws. _Good Muggle… now, walk down the next alley to your left…_

We were powerless to disobey. A zombie. What evil trickery was this, we wondered as we dragged our feet, hissing and spitting all the way. This level of nefarious control was well within Harry's Code. Anticipation mingled with the righteous indignation; the Dark Passenger narrowed its eyes and twisted into a tight and nervous coil.

The huge man stepped from the shadows, his light skin and eyes washed out and eerie under the watchful moon, his nose freckled with dark blood spatter. An involuntary shiver raced across my skin as I recognised the shadow that shrouded him, felt the echo of recognition thud in my ears; he carried his own Dark Passenger… one with heightened powers, it seemed, because my feet were frozen to the ground (my Dark Passenger railed against invisible bars) and I stood statue-still as he smiled at me.

"The Aurors will be here soon, and you will tell them that Thorfinn Rowle sends his love, ja?"

And then he disappeared into thin air with a gunshot crack, leaving me frozen and thinking that my imagination really was running rampant through my dreams.

~DDD~

It wasn't a dream.

A few minutes later, a group of men in red… dresses… beamed into existence, eyes narrowed, pointing their… sticks around in the typical stance of law enforcement on high alert.

"_Lumos_," one of them called, and the alley lit up with a blue-tinged, unearthly glow. The Dark Passenger stopped protesting and snarling, struck dumb by the beautiful violence that had just been drawn out from the deep shadows in long, graceful arcs of blood.

One of the men vomited against the alley wall; another shouted, "Oh, Merlin, it's a _Sectumsempra_," with sheer horror straining his voice.

But I'm fascinated.

Automatically, I tried to reconcile the spatter with the gaping and violent slashes on the body, lying prone in a deepening pool of blood: Spatter pattern indicated that the weapon was probably a knife, but there was no accompanying cast-off; the wounds were too deep for even the largest knife.

A forensic conundrum.

"Fuck!" one of the men shouted—tension tightened his young voice, dragging his cry up several octaves until it strangled itself while he run his hands through his untidy, black hair. He whirled around to face an older black-haired man, this one tall and thin and angular like a stick-figure. He wore a black dress; a darker shadow in amongst the sea of red.

All of them were ignoring me.

Briefly, I wondered if I was invisible. My Dark Passenger snarled at me scornfully and strained against the iron bands that bound us.

The tall man's black eyes flickered towards me, and I felt the resonance of his dark shadow in the brief second that our eyes met—a dark kinship furled into visceral life between us.

_Hello, brother,_ I thought, and my Dark Passenger smiled darkly.

And then he blinked and the shadow disappeared, like his Dark Passenger had been shuttered away behind his eyes.

"It's Lee Jordan, Snape!" the young one said. Vivid emotion coloured his voice—distress leeched into his green eyes, twisted his face.

"Yes," said Snape flatly. This man doesn't work as hard as I do to wear a pleasant human face. He doesn't have any trace of emotion in his voice; the sharp and hawkish planes of his face are impassive. How has he found a niche in society if he doesn't pretend, I wonder in abject fascination.

"And an Imperius'd Muggle again," the young man cries, jabbing an accusatory finger at me. "What's the fucking point of making the Unforgivables Taboo if our reaction time isn't quick enough to pick up an Apparition trail?" He pushes his glasses up his nose forcefully.

I wonder if I've stepped onto a movie set; half of what the angry young man just said doesn't make sense.

"Because the Taboo Trace cannot distinguish between a true incantation and every wizard and his Crup swearing that they will _Crucio_ their children if they do not behave, Potter," Snape said with an edge of scorn lacing his precise, British accent. "I am still not convinced that the Aurors are best served placing the Unforgivables under Taboo—"

"It's better than it was before, Snape!" Potter cuts him off with a slash of his hand through the tense, night air.

Snape's thin lips pulled into a tight line of disapproval, and he turned his dark eyes on me. It's obvious that they did not believe I killed the man; there was more going on here than met the eye. My analytical brain was tangled in the threads of strange jargon; I still wasn't convinced I was entirely awake. "Let's see what message was left with the Muggle this time."

Muggle?

Snape's lips twisted into a nasty sneer as he took in my polyester bowling shirt (the one with the red dragons)—as if wearing a black dress gave him ample room for judgement. "He's a _tourist_, Potter," he said, pulling a glass phial from his pocket.

That warm feeling of kinship I'd felt with this shadowed man diminished in the face of his mockery. My Dark Passenger hissed tempting suggestions for retribution. Need swirled through my leaden limbs.

He pried my mouth open with his thin, long fingers—I wanted to snap my teeth and draw blood, but my body wouldn't obey. Desperately frozen Dexter oozed hatred through every pore. Determined Dexter vowed to hunt this Dark man down and spent extra time dissecting him (if he fell within Harry's Code, which Dexter was sure he did, given the lurking shadow)…

Three icy drops on my tongue.

And then my brain unclutched.

~DDD~

Decidedly Dreaming Dexter (because wizards with wands and the floating pen had to have come from Deranged Dexter's dream world) couldn't hold a single secret in his head after they unfroze my body from the neck-up.

"Name?" Potter asked.

"Dexter Morgan," I answered dutifully, and the pen scribbled it down on a thick piece of paper.

I proceeded to spew my address, vocation, age and reason for visiting London into the copper-tainted night. My Dark Passenger hissed at me urgently, making horrible threats and trying to tie my slippery tongue into knots. The round moon stared down on me, baleful and bright, and my shadow slunk along the brick as if it were trying to run away from the incessant questions.

"And what did the man say?" Potter asked. Snape stood just behind Potter's right shoulder, his arms crossed over his chest, his face blank and bored.

The red-dressed men hovered around the body, breaking every rule of forensic investigation that I could have listed; these British whatevertheyweres really didn't seem have a clue. I thought of Vince and how he would have laughed at these people: "Ah ha ha ha," he would have wheezed in his fake laugh. "What a bunch of fuck ups. Ah ha ha ha."

"He said to tell you—if you are the Aurors—that Thorfinn Rowle sends his love," I parroted, and I gave Snape my best and bright human fake-smile.

"I wonder if Jugson was with him," Potter muttered and turned away from me dismissively.

"I'll have to check his memories before we _Obliviate_ him," Snape said curtly, stepping towards me as he raised his wand.

"How about asking permission first," I said quickly, raising my eyebrows because my arms were still frozen to my sides. Daring Dexter's lips curled into a sneer of their own. "Either arrest me or let me—"

"_Silencio_," Snape said sharply, and then I was mouthing my protest in vain—Decidedly Dumb Dexter's words were lost to some unseen vacuum. The English moon winked and seemed to be laughing, now.

"_Legilimens_," Snape said, and his black eyes stabbed into mine. My Dark Passenger shrieked with shrill indignation and curled into a tight ball inside me, hiding from the probing connection.

I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. I channelled my darling sister and thought with all my might: _Fuck you, you motherfucking wanker._

_Language,_ his deep and sinuous voice chided.

The probing grew sharper until it was a knife edge, and all my private and blood-stained thoughts began to bleed into a vortex: A grave-full of tiny bones; a child sitting in a river of blood; a featureless face in a white, silk mask; Harry's face and Harry's soothing voice; Cody and Astor; a rosewood box full of blood-dotted slides; the bite of fishing nylon into latex gloves; Rita; Deb; blood rising from a scalpel's cut; Harry's Code; neat and tidy packages of limbs; meticulous research; the blood-red moon; the Need.

And then the pressure faded and left me reeling while he stared at me impassively without a trace of surprise or disgust.

The corner of his mouth lifted in a slight smile, and he unshuttered his eyes. His Dark Passenger glinted there, almost playful.

I heard a voice in my head again, a light pressure: _Another one with a code. And a Muggle, too._

Curiosity replaced need, raged in my blood. What was Snape's code? How did he decide who deserved to die? Where did his moral compass point?

"Well?" Potter demanded. Potter didn't have a shadow—his eager virtuosity shone from behind his green, green eyes. I wondered how Snape and his Dark Passenger dealt with such righteous light on a daily basis. At least Angel-no-relation had a ragged and tainted edge to his inherent 'goodness'.

Snape shrugged. "He did not see anything other than Rowle." He scowled at me. "And now I feel like a Cuban sandwich."

My answering grin may have just been genuine.

~DDD~

Dazed Dexter stepped back into the hotel room. I'd been out to find something to eat, but it had taken me a long time—it was like an entire hour had sublimated into the sky, magnetically drawn by the moon.

My Dark Passenger was agitated, hissing murder and blood into my tired mind. I yawned and ignored it. We'd be back home in two days and then I could take up Harry's Code with a vengeance again…

"Come to bed, sexy," Rita called. "I missed you…"

What was a fake-human to do when his new wife called him back to bed with the silver moon sliding sinuously across her smooth skin?

Dashing Dexter went back to bed.

THE END.


End file.
